


Say Something

by Admiral



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Gen, M/M, a lot of personal headcanons went into this, but the character was already dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-20 23:08:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1529153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Admiral/pseuds/Admiral
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shaun deals with the personal fallout of Desmond's death, in his own way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Say Something

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Xyriath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xyriath/gifts).



Shaun didn’t remember the first few days after he died.

It was a week before he noticed what Rebecca was giving him to eat and drink, and even longer to bring himself to care. She tried to use Desmond’s mug, but it just sat there till the drink cooled, untouched. He carefully dumped out the tea, rinsed it and sat it on his desk. He heard William and Rebecca talking, but he didn’t care about what they were saying, even though he knew, somewhere, that it was important. That things were riding on them, and they need to work. He just sat, staring at the mug, trying to remember everything he could about his lips when he took a drink. Even the smell of the coffee he drank (flavored blends, black, with sugar were his favorites, and every cup smelled different, when he had the option. Shaun berated him for his heathen beverage of choice, and he just laughed) and Shaun’s throat closed up and his eyes stung, remembering. His breath scratched against his throat, chest felt tight, shaking slightly.

He didn’t remember snatching up the mug and hurling it, but he did remember the broken pieces, and kneeling, trying to fit it back together. He didn’t remember the cuts on his hands, or Rebecca helping him up, but when he came back, the shattered mug had been cleaned up, and his chest felt like someone had scrubbed it with steel wool. He just turned, facing his computers and sitting, not really looking at anything.

* * *

 

The next few weeks were a blur, like everything was slightly out of focus, tilted off balance. He would turn, thinking of something to say to someone who wasn’t there, then stop and look away, fighting a wave of nausea and tears.

There were things he couldn’t touch around their temporary base. The animus, empty no matter how many times he looked and hoped; a sleeping bag, unused; a notebook full of misspelled words in bartenders handwriting, and a white hoodie, folded up neatly on his desk.

It got even worse when he realized this was all there was.

He would spend hours staring at the hoodie, looking for something. It took him a long time to figure out what, but when he did he just rested his head on his arms and stayed there, dry-eyed and feeling like each breath was drug out of him and more than he deserved, until he drifted off. His blanket was around his shoulders when he woke up. He didn’t bother removing it. He’d fall asleep in the same spot sooner or later.

When he did speak again, his throat was so scratchy that it took him a couple of tries. The timing was off and the comment wasn’t funny, but the relief on Rebecca’s face was enough to make him grateful he had even tried.

Eventually he started to function on his own again, though it was hard. Mornings and nights, especially, though if he made a list of times it hurt almost too badly to move it was meal times and break times and down time and work and dreams and breathing and even sitting motionless didn’t make the pain go away. He adjusted though. He’d hold conversations in his head, the way they used to, until one day he had to go for a walk, because he had forgotten the way his voice sounded when it wrapped around certain words.

They had yelled at him when he got back, claiming that it could ruin their cover if he was recognized, but he didn’t care. If he died now it would be a relief, and if the Templars tried to torture him, well, he knew there wasn’t a pain worse than this one.

* * *

 

William sent him home, a few weeks later. Home, though, was a nondescript apartment under a false name in the middle of a city he didn’t care to learn the name of. He fed himself, and showered frequently, and worked on reports for the assassins, but he didn’t joke any more. Hardly talked to Rebecca, even, and didn’t care that she had been put on an assignment in Australia, though he realized the second he shut the door that he would miss her. The rest of the time he felt like a shell, like blown glass that was too thin and fragile around the edges. He got a papercut one night, on one of his knuckles, and just stared, waiting for the cracks to spread outwards, spiderwebbing all over until he finally looked as busted up as he felt. He imagined bits falling through, showing the hollow grey nothing just underneath his skin.

He never imagined that one person could do this to him. Never thought that one person could hurt this much.

After a few weeks, he picked up the notebook he had claimed. His hand shook, as he traced his fingers over the pages, feeling the indents made by the pen. It was boring and battered, from being shoved in a backpack that could barely fit it. A few words were misspelled, others crossed out, with multiple attempts scattered around it, places where the cheap pen ran out and he had to scribble to get it working again, doodles in the corners that were more precious than all the hieroglyphics in Egypt, and only about half of the pages were filled up. The last page of writing, he couldn’t bring himself to touch. He realized he hadn’t read a single word of what it said, but he didn’t care. He had time. He closed it, ignoring the wet drops on the bottom corner and the back of his hand.

He turned back to his report, leaving the notebook on top of his piles of books, completely innocuous.

If someone had asked him, right then, he’d smash the Rosetta Stone with the Ten Commandments if it meant that notebook would just fill up with more messy handwriting.

* * *

 

He had fallen asleep on the couch, and woke up after a couple hours with a crick in his neck, blinded by the glare of his computers. Shuffling, half asleep, to his room, he rummaged around in his closet for a shirt to sleep in, and fell into his bed, snuggling down into the blankets, trying to pretend it wasn’t as empty as it felt.

He slept better than he had in ages. Heard the creak of the door, felt the bed dip, arms around him pulling him close, breathing on the back of his neck, and a voice he knew, whispering against his skin. The smell of rain like he had been dancing in it, and the smell of his skin, and the crisp lightning smell of the Apple. Felt the kiss on his neck and the hand playing with the hem of his shirt.

Jerked awake, frantically glancing around the empty room. The bed next to him was empty, undisturbed. The white jacket was in his hands, what he had pulled from the closet. His hands were tracing embroidered eagle that probably cost more than what he should have spent on his salary, but he had liked it.

It was just a jacket, but he cradled it like a lover, the smell of him still strong after all this time, and suddenly Shaun couldn’t breathe through the sobs. Curled up in his bed, crying so hard tears wouldn’t come and the only sound he made was the huff of his breath as he tried to gasp. His fingers dug into the fabric, clenching it, thinking he should have done that months ago. Grabbed his hand and never let go until the world ended around them. Held him until someone else saved the planet. Someone Shaun didn’t love so desperately.

But now all he had was a half scribbled notebook and a jacket, and a handful of memories that hurt almost more than they were worth, though he kept them like a miser with a diamond.

He kept the jacket to his face, not caring that it got tear soaked, just feeling the deep ache that hadn’t left him and thinking till the sun rose.

* * *

 

He called William in the morning, to lay out his plan. The other line was quiet for a long time, then a “I think that’s a good idea. You sure?” slightly husky. He had lost his son, after all, and Shaun felt a little guilty for forgetting that.

“Very.”

“I’ll set it up.” and then he hung up, and Shaun set out to work.

* * *

 

It was harder than he thought, getting started. Any other project was easy, just start at the beginning. But where was the beginning, when he lived it? Did his origin play a role, or Lucy’s? What about Rebecca, or the history of Abstergo? The Templars and assassins?

Eventually he just started writing about the Old Ones, and let it unfold from there, detailing the history of the Apple and the other Pieces, the rise of the Assassins and Templars and the important figures of each. He got to the historical figures who used it, and the behind the scenes theories of events in the past century, and even up to the training grounds in South Dakota before he ground to a halt. He would have preferred, as a historian, to ask the source, but he was gone (and it still hurt to think it), and he knew he couldn’t handle a conversation about him with his father.

He sent what he had to William, a feeling of pride at having done so much burgeoning in his chest. It was one of the only things he’d felt since it happened, still smothered by the pain, but definitely there.

* * *

 

The next time Shaun turned to the project, he started working on his early life. He knew enough from watching through the animus to sketch out details, William could fill in certain parts later. He got all the way through his capture by Abstergo and his dealings with Vidic and Lucy before he got caught up on the first time they met. He went back and did a brief dossier of Lucy, Rebecca, and himself, and then tried to go back.

He did better the second try, getting the story down, and the hidden history of Renaissance Italy, but trailed off remembering how he had passed out that day in the warehouse. Fear grabbed at his throat, realizing in hindsight that it was the bleeding effect, he just never said anything. They had lost other assassins to it, Lucy had impressed on him the danger involved, but of course, of course, he had just pressed on.

“Bloody idiot,” he hissed, fingers twitching and eyes burning. The echo in his apartment hurt worse.

* * *

 

He got through the rest of Ezio’s life, and recounted Lucy’s death. The rage he felt, before he told them about what Juno had said, about how she had been planning on betraying them. The desolation everyone had felt after that, and how they worried about the coma, and how the shock would impact him.

The cave came next, and he had to stop for days that stretched into weeks, simply unable to bring himself to continue. The clawing pain was back, dragging itself up his throat, making his hands shake and his breathing shudder.

The cave had brought it all to a head. Shaun had always known he was bisexual, but his low grade crush hadn’t bothered him before. He was able to ignore it, because he had been more annoying than he was pretty. Something, though, in the way William treated him had given him a reality check. He’d thought he had been doing pretty well, but he found himself flirting, even more surprised when he flirted back.

The worst part was, that wasn’t part of the history. It wouldn’t get written down, so no one would know just how much Shaun cared for the stupid man.

He couldn’t move on. He talked about the color of his eyes and the sound of his laugh, the play of light on his face, texture differences on his skin from the scars, but none of that was history. Not to anyone but him. He went on for pages about the way he felt under him, the way he loved the rain, the face he made when he was thinking, the feel of his hand around Shaun’s. He spent almost a full chapter on their first night together. Almost another on the way he made Shaun feel, the way he could almost make him believe in miracles, that they would save the day and it would work out.

He wrote pages about his smile.

But none of it mattered. But he couldn’t take it out. It was what made him him, and he was a part of history now.

Shaun stopped. Saved the document, and cried. History was what he devoted his life to, the documents and the records and the players and events, but none of them, not one, could tell him all about one person. The people that had lived and breathed and loved and died, and he didn’t know a single thing about the trillions that came before him. No one knew them. They know the players and events and the records and the books, but the people, the humans that existed, were just gone. Their infinite little histories died with them, and Shaun knew that everyone was poorer for it.

Even if most people didn’t make great contributions, they were still important. He had taught him that. The bartender that saved the world, at the expense of his own life, had told him one day that he was interested in the people that were in the cities, the guards in the animus, the players and the prostitutes and the artists who never made a name for themselves. He understood history a way Shaun had never been able to. Everything that happened affected everyone around them. The people who just lived, they were the ones that made history. The big names were the usurpers, the abnormalities. It was the farmer who showed his neighbor a new plant, the woman who showed her friend a new drink, the innkeeper who gave a man a bed and meal, it was those people who drove history. Their names didn’t exist anymore, and anything they might have been had long since crumbled away, but they were the ones that mattered, they were the ones that shaped the world.

He knew that. Shaun hadn’t. Not till now.

“I’ll tell them, Desmond.” his voice cracked on his name, the first time he had said it since his death. His voice echoed in his apartment, empty as it was, but he kept on, “I’ll tell them who you were. The parts that mattered, the ones that didn’t. You were.. so important. It’s my job to make them see it. I promise you I’ll do it. History will know more than your name.”

* * *

 

He got back to writing. Telling them Desmond’s story. The Desmond he knew, the one he had fallen in love with. He’d asked Rebecca and William to write something as well, their perspective, but he hadn’t read them yet. Too focused on pulling all of his memories out, writing them down. The pain was still there, would always be there, and knowing that everyone would read his raw feelings about the subject made him jumpy, but Desmond, of all people, deserved to be known.

He finished, abruptly. Made it to the last day, with Juno. Time was pressing down on them and Desmond, god, poor Desmond. He could barely finish his last chapter, knowing what came at the end. Tears were flowing, but he kept typing. Knowing if he didn’t finish, he never would.

 

> “Given a choice between the release of a powerful entity that was intent on subjugating the human race, or the death of 2/3rds of the worlds population, most people would have hesitated. Desmond Miles, Assassin, Bartender, Son, Partner, Friend, and the culmination of a millennia long plot to prevent total devastation, didn’t. He believed in the ability of the human race to see past its differences and work together, to defeat this entity, and save itself. He believed in a way out of the cycle of destruction, and wanted unity for a better world. If he were here today, he would have said the same thing.
> 
> Desmond is an example of the best the human race has to offer, a dyslexic bartender who was raised to be an assassin, but a fundamentally good person; proof positive of the very thing he preached. I will miss and love him until the day I die, but he taught me, and should teach all of us, a valuable lesson, summarized by an American author:
> 
> “The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual - for it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.  
>  -M. Scott Peck”

* * *

 

Rebecca helped him write the program that would email a copy of the book to every inbox in the world. It would publish a news story, and add a post to every social media feed. There would be no getting rid of it, along with all the supporting documentation from the hack of Abstergo files gathered over the years.

Shaun was anxious, knowing that soon everyone connected to the internet would be reading his work, reading about Desmond. He sighed and sat down, giving Rebecca the go ahead to launch.

There was a moment of silence, then a knock on his door.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "Say Something" by A Great Big World, with Christina Aguilera.


End file.
